After her formal introduction to the nobles of the Floato Region during the welcome party a few nights back. The emissary from the Darknar family, Rain Darknar was led to a guest mansion that had been prepared for her stay in Radiance City.
Normally, a guest such as the leader of a diplomatic party from another region would be allowed to stay within the walls of the Emerald Palace.
However, to prevent fear and panic from the palace staff guards due to the frighteningly dreadful undead unit that had accompanied the Leader of the Darknar family's Legates, the Jaxith family had been forced to prepare a detached mansion for their stay in the Central district of the city, away from the other noble residents.
They had also restricted the city's guards from approaching the luxurious mansion while having to replace the mansion's workers with a few especially skilled maids to personally attend to the emissary.
These maids were high-tiered Demonesses capable of withstanding the aura oozing off the bodies of the undead creatures without affecting their efficient work. They had also received assurance from the emissary that the undead creatures would not attack unless provoked.
As the presence of the Doom Cavaliers was enough to threaten even their most skilled knight, there was no need to worry about assigning any protection details to the emissary as long as one of the maids accompanies her at all times.
As such, the entire mansion was only attended to by a pair of two maids and a cook, making the massive mansion feel rather vast and empty. However, that did not seem to bother Rain.
"Welcome back, Lady Rain."
"Ah... Thank you."
Rain smiled gently as she walked by the main door of the mansion and entered what had been her current residence for the last few days. The interior of the mansion had a simple design but the quality of each item of furniture was almost as impressive as the ones in the Emerald Palace.
Although there were only two maids and one cook working here, everything remained as spotless as it was when she was first brought here, it was easy to see how seriously skilled the maids the Jaxith family had provided were.
Of course, Rain was keenly aware of the fact that they were also here to keep an eye on her and inform the palace of her movements but that was only to be expected.
Rain sighed as she walked through the entrance hall and up the stairs, heading straight for her assigned chambers.
She had spent the majority of the previous day touring the popular locations in Radiance city to better familiarize herself with the workings of a city not operated by one of the Great Five but everywhere she went had been cleared out for her visit, making the sights a little lackluster and uninformative.
After that, she escorted the 2nd prince and the 5th princess in seeing a theatre play dedicated to the old demon king which only annoyed her for some strange reason.
As though that was not enough, she had also been forced to attend an early lunch with the so-called royal family and the elders before the main diplomatic negotiations that had happened later that evening.
Rain frowned. This was not the first time she had needed to dress elegantly and act so prime and proper in noble society as she had needed to do the same once before for an assassination mission from the Alcar family.
She had also received countless training on noble etiquette and mannerisms but she still found the entire thing to be rather tiresome even though those experiences were proving rather useful right now.
Rain increased her pace and before the maid that had escorted her could react to match it, she swung the door to her room open and took a seat.
To be fair, the diplomatic negotiations with the Jaxith family had turned out to be more interesting than she had expected, thanks to her following Zomatsu's suggestion of inviting the 5th princess to participate in what was meant to be simple trade negotiations similar to the others she had completed on her way here.
Having visited five other regions before heading here, she had already successfully signed several trade deals with the ruling class families of each region that solved the Darknar family's problem of a stagnating economy.
However, throughout Rain's trip, she had received compiled and detailed pieces of information on the ruling family of whatever region she was visiting with a brief suggestion at the end of each report.
The reason she was able to continuously receive the information on time was due to her master's shadow creatures Shadow Network.
Apparently all of her master's shadow undead share the same shadow dimension where they are all able to store and retrieve items not including living matter. The shadow dimension was something that existed within all shadows and was what they normally used for their shadow movements.
This did not extend to all of his other undead creatures, only beings like the Shadow Rogues and Shadow mages. It was indeed a convenient feature that aid the transportation of key items and information provided a shadow creature was around as they simply needed to store and retrieve an item from wherever they were, no matter the distance.
A sort of shared, inventory system if you will.
Thanks to Nessi and Zelda traveling with them, Rain was able to receive accurate information from Z's ongoing investigations as he establishes an information network for the Darknar family. She could surmise this was the reason Lord Ty had sent his shadows with them in the first place.
Although Rain didn't know much about Z, from his actions alone, she could tell he was truly loyal to their master even though the reason for that was still a mystery to her.
She didn't think such strong devotion was a result of him saving his life just once even though that was a valid reason. She believed there was something Z knew about their master as a former noble of the Zorak family.
Still, the fact that he was now loyal to her master was enough for her to trust him and take his suggestions extremely seriously.
For the other families she had visited as an envoy, the information he had provided had not only provided her with the right information on the family to negotiate a more favorable trade deal for the Darknar family, but it had also included the possibility of Dark elves slaves being illegally owned by a few ranked noble families under the ruling families of each region.
Not knowing if she would be interested in taking action, he had always still included personal suggestions that would help in locating and freeing the slaves without so much as leaving any traces behind.
Given as the trading of Dark elves was strictly prohibited by the Great Five even more so than slavery itself, former owners couldn't complain about their missing slaves.
So far, she had managed to free more than five dark elves' slaves after getting permission from her master, sending them back to be treated by Erin with the aid of Emrys's Gates.
The fact that there were so many dark elves still being used as slaves even after the Great Five abolished slave trading and aggressively persecuted the trading of dark elves slaves was worrisome.
While Rain had only ever been close with Liz ever since she could remember, she still didn't fancy the idea of her fellow race being treated like toys. It even made her wonder if this was why her beloved master had sent her as an envoy.
Rain believed her master's shadow creations were more than intelligent and charismatic enough to be used as envoys for simple trade negotiations but she hadn't initially thought much about it as she had only wanted to be just as useful as Liz.
However, after reading Z's reports and suggestions one after the other, she was beginning to believe there was more to this than simple trade negotiations.
What if Z's words were true? What if there were several hidden layers behind their master's every word and actions?
He hadn't given her any solid response when she had brought up the issue with the Dark elves, just stating she was free to do as she pleased. If that's the case, shouldn't she strive to achieve more than simply establishing trades with each family?
After coming to this realization, Rain wasn't surprised after seeing Z's report on the Floato Region and the Jaxith family. This was the oldest family that had remained loyal to the demon king and resisted the Great Five's influence to the point of extinction.
Judging by the Great Five's interest in them while being willing to back down till now, it was clear this family held a secret they were willing to die for.
Such a family was definitely worthy of becoming the new Darknar family's first vassal family which would send a message to the rest of the Demon continent, and one of Z's suggestions about this family proved he had the same idea.
Inviting the 5th princess of the Jaxith family to participate in the diplomatic negotiations proved to be quite beneficial to their cause as she seemed to share the same mindset.
However, her intellect was rather surprising as she had barely said a word yet led the conversation in her desired direction.
As a Demigod-level assassin, there was nothing that could escape Rain's observation and she had never once failed to judge a target and this princess was no different.
Z hadn't mentioned much in his report perhaps trying to test Rain's capabilities or maybe he had simply believed Rain would notice everything without fail. Seeing the 5th princess's attitude at the dinner party had made her send Zelda to investigate more about her which had turned out to be the right call.
After learning of the 5th princess's true intent from Zelda, Rain didn't alter her plans in any way. The diplomatic negotiations had proceeded as planned and a solid trade agreement was on the verge of being signed between the Jaxith family and the Darknar family.
In exchange for specialty goods and items, the Darknar family would provide the Jaxith family with a few Doom Knights to defend their territoryn. Yet any talks of vassalage were met with immense resistance from the family's elders.
Despite their dire situation, it seems the pride of the elders as the oldest demon family to serve under the original demon king was too great for them to accept the new Darknar family as worthy.
Unfortunately, the Demon Lord seems to be easily swayed by the words of the elders even going against the advice of the 2nd Prince who was the current heir to the title.
Rain could tell the 2nd prince was subtly pushing for favorable vassalage as the number of Doom Knights they were able to negotiate for was far too insufficient to fully protect them from the combined might of their neighboring regions.
However, despite her extremely lax vassalage conditions, the elders would not bulge but this was only the first round of negotiations so there was still time to change their minds.
Perhaps if she had Zelda destroy one of their bordering cities still standing they would feel the pressure and swallow their pride.
However, doing such a reckless thing not knowing whose watching might end up coming back to trouble her master in the future so was most definitely a bad idea.
"...Sigh..."
The entire situation now was extremely burdensome but that didn't mean someone like her couldn't solve it.
She could simply just relax and allow the 5th Princess's plans to handle the situation but Rain had a feeling her goals may be slightly different from Citrus.
Fortunately, aside from Z's information, Rain had also done some more investigation of her own with the help of Zelda and thus, there were other ways of achieving her goals.
There hadn't been much time to interrogate the assassin captured by Zelda but thanks to the information she was able to gain from their brief conversation, she was able to get a general idea of the situation surrounding the Floato region and formulate a plan using all the pieces that had conveniently been placed around her by a genius.
She couldn't help but completely believe Z's words. Their master had surely things to play out this way when he asigned her thid mission.
Everything moved as they had expected and now, they were currently in the best position to spring board the plan for their beloved master's ultimate goal.
With all the players now on the board, it was about time to make their move.
"Lady Rain, it's almost time."
"Right."
After taking a minute to calm herself down, the maids assisted her in changing for her next occasion for the evening. After all, she has been invited as the guest of honor in a private dinner party that should be starting soon.
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